A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

the camera, and I felt that the screen became the medium through which they could turn that look onto the audience.

MacDonald:

Is it fair to say that the title of

Powaqqatsi

[the translation of

powaqqatsi

''(from the Hopi language,

powaq

sorcerer and

qatsi

life) n. an entity, a way of life that consumes the life force of other beings in order to further its own life"is presented at the end of the film] refers to you as filmmaker? Do you see yourself as sorcerer, and film as the life consuming other lives?

Reggio:

It has something to do with that. I can't produce a film

without

using the camera, so I had to freely accept that as a contradiction.

MacDonald:

There are moments in the film that seem to have nothing to do with the Third World. Perhaps the most obvious (and maybe I just don't understand what I'm looking at) is the shot where you're in some kind of car on a track: the experience is very like, the roller-coaster ride World's Fair films take audiences on.

Reggio:

Well, that was shot in Brazil, in Cubatao, which is probably the single, densest industrial zone in the Third World, and the most pollutedso polluted that some children are born without brains. That was a power plant, and we were in a car on a long cable track. It was

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going very slow, but we were shooting at very slow frame rates to produce acceleration. Along with the aerials over the high rises in Sao Paolo, that shot is an introduction into modernity as a consuming force. It makes way for the shot of the huge El Globo Television Tower in Sao Paolo, followed by the video dreamthe video advertising images showing the seductive nature of this "sorcerer." I wanted to be true to the term

powaqqatsi:

the method of operation of a powaqqa, a black magician, is seduction and allurement. It's not an out-front aggression; it's subtle. I feel that's the way modernity operates: it doesn't say, "This is going to be bad for you"; it creates desires that become "necessities."

MacDonald:

How much did you shoot and how much did you use of what you shot in

Koyaanisqatsi

and

Powaqqatsi?

Reggio:

The ratio was fifty to one in

Powaqqatsi:

for a film of about ten thousand feet we shot five hundred thousand feet of footage. The reason, of course, is that you only get one shot at going around the world. I wanted a year to shoot; I got six months. So instead of using one crew, I used two. Also, when you're shooting at very fast frame ratesour norm was anywhere from 36 to 129 frames a secondfootage adds up quickly. Without a screenplay, with a dramaturgical structure, I had to be sure to get enough material because I didn't know how the film would edit together until we saw what we actually had. Of course, the footage not used in one film may be useful to me for other productions, or for other people's films. It's available. I have a library.

In the case of

Koyaanisqatsi,

we shot more like thirty to one. Time-lapse makes for very slow frame rates, so we used less footage for more impact. We shot about three hundred thousand feet.

MacDonald:

Did you personally supervise all the shooting?

Reggio:

In the case of

Powaqqatsi,

I had contact with the cinematographers here for several months in advance. We worked on the dramaturgical concept of the film, as well as on the language of the cinematography. During the shooting, two crews always stayed in the same city or the same region. I would scout every other day with the directors of photography (we didn't shoot every day); then I would divide my time between the two crews. I would say my participation was about seventy-five percent. We would collaborate on what the image would be, but I choose cinematographers who I feel are artists at heart, and I like to give them as much freedom as they feel they can use.

MacDonald:

What had Zourdoumis and Berry done before?

Reggio:

Leo Zourdoumis, who died in a plane crash two years ago in Zurich, was an I-Max specialist. He had done a lot of work at the Canadian Film Board. Graham Berry was an aerial specialist, an underwater specialist, and a portrait specialist.

I should also mention that without the tremendous organizational ca-

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pacity of Mel Lawrence, who was one of the directors of Woodstock, I couldn't have got

Powaqqatsi

done. Mel and I had gone around the world once before, looking for locations, while we showed

Koyaanisqatsi,